


A Dollar Dance

by Sunshinebunnie



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Betty Cooper being a badass, F/M, Sex in a Car, Slow Burn, Smut, Southside Serpent Jughead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshinebunnie/pseuds/Sunshinebunnie
Summary: When Betty Cooper's parents lose all of her college fund in a bad investment deal, her new roommate, Veronica, gets her an waitressing interview at the strip club where she works. After spending several years in Ohio, FP and the Serpents host a "coming home" party for Jughead at the strip club FP owns: the Whyte Wyrm. Circumstances conspire to bring Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones together for a night neither of them will quickly forget.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 53
Kudos: 135
Collections: Riverdale Bingo 2021





	1. I'm Not A Dancer...

**Author's Note:**

> First off, let me extend a HUGE thank you to @blackrose3262-blog for being lovely and amazing by volunteering to beta for me! But for their wonderful suggestions, this would've been a behemoth one-shot. 🤗🤗🤗
> 
> Second, there is a passing implied reference to FP having prior drug use. If this could be a trigger a possible trigger for you, please consider yourself warned. 
> 
> Last, if you want to come find me on Tumblr, feel free to hit me up @sunshinebunnie. 😊😊😊

Working at a strip club had never been part of Betty’s “plan.” Her freshman year at Stonewall University had been going well right up until she’d come home for Christmas break. Although she’d blocked out most of the memory, she remembered the sickening dread that settled in her stomach when her parents sat her down on December 26th and told her about a “bad investment,” a “Ponzi scheme,” how they’d “lost all” of her remaining college fund. 

After several frantic calls to the financial aid office, she’d finally managed to get ahold of someone at the university who was able to cobble together something resembling an aid package. (Given how much loan “assistance” was included in the offer, Betty was hard-pressed to really call it “aid.”) Thankfully, her stellar first semester had qualified her for a few grants that had offset some of the crushing debt. 

Much of the following summer had been spent working any job that would pay her: waitressing at the local diner, writing spec pieces for various local news outlets, even baking more than a few birthday cakes for people around Riverdale. By the time her first tuition payment for her sophomore year came due that August, she’d barely scraped together enough money to cover the payment and afford the most beat-up copies of her textbooks that the campus bookstore had to offer. 

She’d barely sat down at her desk to eat her meager dinner of dry cereal and water when her roommate, Veronica, had suddenly swanned into their room.

“B, get dressed! We’re going out!” she’d said with an imperious finality that Betty was still getting used to.

“Veronica, I can’t…” Betty started to say, embarrassment flooding through her at having to admit the extent of her dire financial straits to her new roommate.

“I  _ won’t _ take no for an answer. I made  _ BANK _ at work and I would like to celebrate! Don’t worry. It’s my treat,” Veronica said as she’d flashed Betty a smile that was all perfectly straight teeth. 

Although they hadn’t been living together for long, Betty had become familiar with the almost manic smile Veronica flashed at her: it was the one she  _ knew _ meant nothing she said or did would dissuade V from what she wanted to do. With a resigned sigh, she’d pushed aside her small, fifty-cent, yard-sale bowl, the quiet rustling of the dry cereal against the sides of the ceramic a mocking reminder of why she shouldn’t be going out. 

The frenetic pace of the evening had just about left Betty’s head spinning, and she couldn’t help the small voice at the back of her mind that kept shouting, ‘There’s no way she can afford all this!’

It wasn’t until the next day as they’d been nursing mutual hangovers that she’d finally mustered up the courage to ask, “What is it, exactly, that you do that you’ve got money to throw around like last night?”

Veronica (or rather, “Monica Posh,” as she claimed to be known at the club) had explained that she’d started dancing at the Whyte Wyrm her freshman year—mostly to piss off her father, although she couldn’t deny that the money she earned dancing allowed her to keep up her lifestyle without having to accept an allowance—and its inevitable conditions—from her parents. The more Veronica talked, the more difficult it was for Betty to keep her jaw from dropping further to the floor. As hard as she found it to wrap her head around the idea that her perpetually  _ Vogue _ -ready roommate lived a secret double-life as a stripper, her brain simply shut down when V told her she was clearing six to eight thousand dollars a month working four nights a week. 

She’d spent most of the following week mulling over what Veronica had told her. As tempting as the money sounded—and the thought of being able to possibly earn the cost of her Spring tuition payment in a little over a month’s worth of work  _ was _ tempting—she couldn’t get over the thought that word of her becoming a stripper would somehow filter back to her parents. Stonewall University was only about a seventy-five minute drive from Riverdale: certainly close enough to lure the odd bachelor party or birthday group of former Riverdale High classmates...or god-forbid, her former teachers. In the end, it was simply a risk she couldn’t take. 

Even though Veronica hadn’t exactly offered to try to get Betty a job dancing at the Whyte Wyrm, Betty still felt a little compelled to tell her that whatever interest she’d shown was merely academic. 

“If you change your mind, let me know,” Veronica had replied breezily before adding “you’d probably have to work a probationary period as a waitress anyway. The crowd at the Wyrm can take some getting used to, and FP doesn’t usually want to chance a girl freezing up when she gets onstage for the first time.”

Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to Betty that strip clubs had waitresses, although the more she thought about it, the more it seemed perfectly logical. Even though she’d done some theatre in high school, she had to admit that Veronica’s subtle jab about stage jitters wasn’t totally unfounded. Being gusseted up for a production of  _ Showboat _ or  _ Hello, Dolly! _ was a far cry from taking her clothes off or dancing practically nude in front of groups of strangers. Waitressing, on the other hand, was something she’d done since high school. Sure, she could still imagine her mom freaking out about the strip club part, but she’d be clothed, and her parents would have the plausible deniability of being able to tell people that she was “putting herself through school waitressing,” if anyone they knew were to ask. 

Before she had a chance to second-guess herself, Betty heard her voice asking, “Do you think they could use a new waitress?”

*

FP Jones, the club’s owner, had almost laughed her out of his office when Veronica first set up the waitressing interview for her. “This gig isn’t like serving lemonade at some church social,” he’d said as he’d rolled his eyes at Veronica for even suggesting the idea to begin with. 

Betty had refused to be denied though. 

“I’ve waitressed pretty steadily for four years,” she’d said, infusing as much of her mother’s iron will into her voice as she could manage. 

He’d cocked an eyebrow at her. “That may be,” he said with a slight drawl, “but it ain’t the  _ technical _ aspect of waitressing that I’m concerned about.”

If she wasn’t quite so desperate to secure some type of employment that would pay her more than the $7.35 an hour that the campus bookstore was offering, Betty was positive she wouldn’t have had the brass to retort, “Hire me for one shift. Like a temp. If I make it through the end of my shift, then you can decide whether you want to take me on more permanently. My friend says people quit all the time here, so what have you got to lose?”

FP stared at Betty for so long, she could tell the minute he began working out the mathematics of her proposal in his head. As soon as the furrow in his brow had started to ease up, Betty knew she was going to become the Whyte Wyrm’s newest waitress. 

“You work next Saturday from eight to four,” he’d eventually said, the hint of a taunting smirk hovering just at the corner of his mouth. 

Betty had been shocked that he’d chosen to give her such a traditionally lucrative shift for her tryout, and had said as much to Veronica on their way back to the dorms. Veronica simply shook her head.

“My dear, sweet Betty. He did that on purpose. Saturday nights tend to be our wildest crowds. He’s counting on you not lasting out your shift, or at least, being too scared to keep working there even if you do make it through the night,” she’d said with a fatalistic dismissiveness that Betty was unused to hearing from Veronica. 

*

Betty was coming up on her six month work anniversary at the Wyrm. Even though she’d gotten used to the patrons with the wandering hands and the one bartender who always tried to give her watered-down drinks, it was the cloying smoke from the patrons’ cigarettes and the smoke machine that half the dancers in the club insisted on using in their acts that was the one downside of the job that Betty still found difficult to deal with. Unlike Veronica, who wore a blonde wig as part of her act, Betty found she got better tips when she pulled her hair up into one of her old cheerleading ponytails. Unfortunately, not covering up her hair also meant taking showers at 5 a.m. with the crew team when she got back to the dorms so she didn’t go to sleep smelling like a strip club. 

Unlike most of the girls who worked at the Wyrm, Betty preferred coming through the front doors of the club, rather than using the rear entrance that went directly to the dressing rooms. Walking the floor in her street clothes gave her a couple minutes to discreetly assess the crowd, figuring out where the rowdy bachelor parties were, or if the one guy who always tried to pinch her ass cheeks was sitting in her section. As she walked through the large open space before her Friday night shift, she could tell there was something different about the Wyrm that she couldn’t quite place her finger on, almost like the unexpected sound of cicadas after years of silent summers. Her eyes scanned the room again. 

It was then that she noticed it. One of the larger semi-private sections of the main bar was roped off like it was reserved. Given how busy Friday nights usually were, Betty could only imagine how much money the group must have thrown at FP to get him to shut down such a prime section of the club before the party actually started. (Normally when groups booked a bottle service package, FP only cleared out a booth thirty minutes or so before the reservation, and people from the group were usually hovering near the tables long before then.) 

As she kept walking back to the dressing rooms, a small part of her hoped that she’d been assigned to work the party. If they had enough money to throw at FP to get him to close down an entire section of the club, she could only imagine how large their bar tab would be—and by extension, the likely tip. However, she couldn’t deny that a much larger part of her hoped she was working her normal section on the opposite side of the club. The few large parties she had worked had really tested the limits of her anxiety medication: a lot of the men didn’t understand there were unspoken protocols in strip clubs ( _ like don’t ask your waitress for a lap dance _ ), and they tended to get rowdier or nastier than the regulars she was accustomed to serving. 

Slipping into the back room, her eyes were immediately drawn to Toni—one of the longest tenured dancers at the club—who was carefully clipping in a set of hot pink hair extensions decorated with tiny fake diamonds that Betty had never previously seen her wear.

“I like your hair, Toni,” Betty said softly as she walked back toward the dressing table all the waitresses shared. 

“Thanks, Cooper,” she replied as she leaned closer to the mirror to better see what she was doing as she glued on a strip of fake eyelashes. “It’s going to be crazy here tonight, and I’m planning to get paid.”

Betty stopped halfway from the small cubby that held her black negligee “uniform.” For a brief second, she debated trying to pump Toni for additional information. They weren’t exactly friendly, but Betty liked to believe their intermittent chats went a step beyond “cordial coworker” banter. 

“When I was walking in, I saw FP had a pretty big section of the club roped off tonight,” she eventually said, her voice drifting off with its implied question.

Toni turned to look at Betty, her open lipstick dangerously close to winding up smeared across her cheek as she studied her for a long minute. She smirked at her in a way that left an uneasy pit of anxiety banging around in her stomach before eventually saying, “The prodigal son is returning.”

Betty’s eyebrows knit in confusion as she tried to think of a reason why Toni’s words should have any meaning to her. Before she could ask for clarification though, Toni’s rich, slightly mocking laughter rang out around the dressing room. 

“Jughead’s home,” she said, as if that should have any more meaning for Betty.

Betty blinked owlishly at her for a second, then said, “Oh,” like she had some idea of what Toni was talking about. 

Just as Toni began opening her mouth to explain further, her tempestuous on-again, off-again girlfriend Cheryl came storming in the back door of the dressing room, nearly screeching, “You  _ knew _ the Hobo Prince was back and you didn’t  _ tell _ me!”

Toni rolled her eyes at Betty before turning her attention back to the mirror. “You know FP doesn’t like it when you insult his son like that, Cher,” she said dryly, her words punctuated with the occasional break as she applied her lipstick.

There was a growl from the other side of the dressing room that almost made Betty think a stray dog had somehow snuck into the club. 

“I don’t give a damn what FP likes,” Cheryl hissed. “The Hobo has  _ never _ respected me, so why should I bother respecting him?”

The sigh Toni slowly let out held the type of suffering and forced obeisance that only those who have had the misfortune of loving  _ enfants terribles _ seem to carry. Carefully closing up her lipstick and setting it down next to her eyeliner and mascara, she said (with what Betty considered to be an admirable amount of dry patience), “You care well enough about what he likes when your only other option is going back to Thornhill.”

There was a small gasp followed by a pregnant silence before Cheryl screeched, “You take that back!”

Toni shrugged. “Why? It’s the truth, Cheryl.”

Betty unconsciously held her breath as she waited to see if the charged air in the dressing room was going to erupt into an all-out brawl between the lovers. Before the tinder of the women’s fight could ignite into a truly epic argument though, a man’s voice was heard coming over the scratchy speakers that FP was endlessly promising to update: “Cherry Bomb. Your set starts in five. Cherry Bomb, on in five.”

There was an unmistakable huff of annoyed air followed by a rustling sound like a jacket being haphazardly thrown over a chair. Not wanting to be late getting out on the floor, Betty took the opportunity to finish walking down to her cubby to get changed. She’d barely finished folding up her brown corduroy skirt into a neat little square when Cheryl threw open the door to the dressing room, the follow spot controlled by the sound booth glinting off the thousands of tiny ruby red sequins and seed beads that made up her matching bra and thong as she shouted to the men in the audience, “ _ Envy me, bitches! _ ” as she made her way on stage. 

It was a hazing ritual of sorts that the “old timers” at the Whyte Wyrm did to the new girls. They’d encourage them to wait to get dressed until Cheryl was about to go on stage—neglecting to mention that she started her act from the door of the dressing room—and then watch as the new girls freaked out thinking the customers caught them changing. After getting in a good laugh, they’d explain that the way Cheryl’s entrance was lit up, no one except Cheryl was visible outside the dressing room. While Betty’s kneejerk reaction was still to cover herself up, she’d gotten better about not acting on it; instead, closing her eyes, and trying to imagine she was wearing one of her string bikinis at the pool rather than a lacy black hipster thong. 

After he’d agreed to her “trial” shift, FP had explained that although the club provided the negligee part of the waitresses’ uniforms, they were on their own for supplying the panties. (“Health department requirement,” he’d said with a mild shrug). The only thing he required was that they be black and not some type of “granny panties.” (“You’re here to make money, and my patrons want something fun and pretty to look at between the dancers’ sets.  _ Granny panties _ aren’t getting that done.”) 

Although she hadn’t initially had any underwear in her collection that met FP’s requirements, Veronica had  _ leapt _ at the excuse to have a girls’ shopping trip in Montreal, and Betty had been happy to rely on her friend’s judgment as to what would work best at the club. 

Slipping off her blue and white sweater, Betty immediately felt her nipples begin to harden beneath her thin satin bra from the lingering draft of damp late March air Cheryl had let in from outside. She took a minute to fold the shirt just as carefully as she’d folded up her skirt, giving her body a couple more minutes to acclimate to the change in temperature before she finally took off her bra. When she no longer felt such a pronounced chill in the air, she turned her back toward the stage door before finally unhooking her bra. Keeping the tan satin pressed to her chest with one arm, she moved as quickly as she could to put on the black lace halter neck negligee one-handed. Finally, she pressed the two ends of the little hidden snap closure that was just beneath the valley of her breasts until she heard a quiet  _ snick _ from the plastic discs locking together before pulling her bra out through the breezy panels of lace that were open below her chest. 

As she bent over to grab her black stilettos from her bag, she caught the briefest glimpse of her reflection in the mirror across from her cubby. With her perky blonde ponytail and seashell pink lipstick she’d put on in the car driving over and the black lacy lingerie, she couldn’t help thinking of something her  _ Sex & Power in Media _ professor, Malachai, had said earlier that semester about society’s perverse obsession with the duality of women as both “The Madonna and the Whore”—the so-called “good girl” gone bad...or more troubling,  _ the bad girl set free _ . 

Betty had been raised with the immutable fact that she was A Good Girl: straight A student, high school cheerleader, tutor, new student outreach ambassador, head of the prom and homecoming committees. It was part of why she’d been so crushed when Archie had called things off with her their Senior year. They’d been childhood sweethearts, growing up next door to each other, the high school quarterback with the varsity cheerleader—theirs was such a stereotypical Americana love story, it had seemed impossible to her that they weren’t each other’s happily ever after. 

The longer she worked at the Wyrm though, the more she found herself wondering if perhaps she  _ wasn’t _ a good girl gone bad like she’d been raised to believe. 

She’d been trying to ignore the feeling for weeks—a niggling feeling at the back of her mind that perhaps she  _ liked _ the fact that she was working at a strip club, even if she was only waitressing. Perhaps she liked it a little  _ too _ much—certainly more than a  _ good girl _ should. She  _ liked _ putting on her black negligee, the flowy open panels of lace showing off the smooth planes of her stomach. Perhaps it  _ wasn’t _ anxiety that caused her heart to race when men at the Wyrm would beg her for a lap dance, but rather a certain excitement she got watching their faces fall as she’d sweetly bat her eyelashes at them and coo “Sorry. Only the dancers do private shows, and I’m just a waitress.” 

Betty tried _not_ to think about how wet she got as she spent all night walking the floor of the club, her silky, lacy thongs pulled against her clit, stimulating the sensitive bundle of nerves all night long. She tried not to think of how full her breasts felt as the snug fit of the negligee pushed them together, giving her the appearance of cleavage for days. Betty _most_ _especially_ tried not to think about how every time she saw the black leather motorcycle jacket that FP and the other members of the Southside Serpent Motorcycle Club wore her breath got a little shorter and her skin felt a little hotter.

Her brief reverie was interrupted when Midge, a waitress who’d started a few weeks before her and was trying to work up to being a dancer, bumped into her from behind. 

“Oh! I’m sorry, Betty!” she rushed to apologize as Betty barely managed to not fall over, thankful that she hadn’t finished putting on her stilettos. 

Betty took a deep breath before replying. She didn’t have a problem with Midge per se, but she was the clumsiest wannabe-dancer Betty had ever met, and Betty had wound up on the wrong side of her drink trays a few too many times when she got nervous. 

“It’s ok. I’m fine, Midge,” she said patiently as she carefully slipped on her heels as she stood up. As Betty’s attention turned toward Midge’s face, she was stunned by the sheer amount of  _ panic _ that she found there. “Are  _ you _ alright?” she asked a little cautiously, unsure of what could have caused such a drastic reaction in her.

“There’s…there’s so… _ many _ of them, Betty,” Midge stuttered in a whisper.

Betty’s face tilted to the side as she studied her for a second before saying in the soothing voice one might use with a scared child or a frightened animal, “It’s just Friday night, Midge. You’ve worked busy Fridays before. You’re going to be fine.”

Suddenly, Midge gripped onto Betty’s forearm like her life depended on it. “You don’t  _ understand _ , Betty,” she said with her eyes a little wild, “ _ It’s the Serpents _ . Almost the entire MC came out to welcome home FP’s kid.” Midge’s nails had sunk deeper into Betty’s arm with every word, and Betty forced herself not to wince. 

“Just try to think…” Betty started to advise before being abruptly cut off by Midge’s panicked voice saying, “FP just called me into the office, Betty. I may actually have to  _ dance _ tonight.” 

Betty tried to give Midge an encouraging smile as she said, “But that’s good news, right? You’ve been looking for your chance to make more money, and it seems like tonight’s your night!”

Due to the semi-darkness of the back end of the dressing room, Betty only had a split second before she saw Midge’s normally tawny skin start to turn an ashy green color. Rushing her to the back entrance as quickly as their high heels would allow, she barely managed to get the heavy steel door open before Midge began puking all over the back alley. As she held the door open, her eyes cut to the big round analog clock on the wall above the stage entrance next to the red illuminated emergency exit sign. She didn’t want to leave Midge all alone, but she knew FP was going to expect her on the floor in the next couple of minutes and she needed to double check her hair and makeup after nearly being knocked over. 

“It’ll be okay, Midge,” Betty said a little apologetically as she watched her continuing to retch near the back door. “I’ll try to see if someone can bring back a glass of water or some ginger ale before you have to go up on stage.” 

*

Midge hadn’t been kidding when she said the Serpents were all over the club. Even though FP had roped off a pretty sizeable section of the Wyrm, it looked like that had merely been to create a dedicated section for the VIPs within the Serpents, rather than giving all of the Serpents one dedicated section of the club. As she’d walked over to Hog Eye to find out her assigned section for the night, she couldn’t help noticing FP over by one of the corded off booths talking to a group of young men in matching Serpent jackets. FP appeared to have his arm around one of them, but from her position across the bar, she couldn’t make out anything about him other than the fact that he appeared to be around FP’s height. 

Hog Eye gave her a friendly smile as she grabbed one of the small round drink trays off the pile stacked up by the empty glass racks. Betty appreciated how cordial he always was opposed to the other bartender, Tall Boy; and he never tried to get her in trouble with the customers by watering down their drinks. She gave him a genuine smile in return as she waited for him to give out her work assignment for the night. When he didn’t immediately say anything, her shoulders started to sag a little—Hog Eye wasn’t one to hold up the girls for no reason since he knew the longer they were off the floor, the more likely their tips would be to decrease. 

Eventually, he shrugged a little and said, “FP said you drew the short straw, so you have to close up tonight.”

Betty felt a weight drop into the pit of her stomach. Having worked in the hospitality industry for several years, she was used to having to do “side work” before she could go home at the end of the night—whether it was rolling silverware, putting up chairs, or even sweeping the floors. Usually though, there were several people working together, and the patrons were a little less... _ rough _ . At the Wyrm, “closing up” meant putting the club to rights—by yourself—from putting up the chairs to cleaning the bathrooms to hunting every possible nook and cranny for mysteriously missing glassware. On a slow night, it could easily add an extra hour or more to a waitress’ shift. After something like this though, Betty would get stuck nearly working a double. The one upshot was that FP recognized it was a bum deal and tended to give the waitresses a “hazard pay” bump whenever it was their turn, although she knew the thought would be a cold comfort to her when it was 7 a.m. and she was still at the Wyrm, barely able to keep her eyes open.

Trying to look for a positive so she didn’t spend her entire night dreading the end of her shift, Betty gave Hog Eye a weak smile before saying with as much pep as she could muster, “At least it should be a good night for tips!”

*

With Midge dancing, Betty and her least favorite co-worker, Penny, were left as the only waitresses on the floor—which  _ functionally _ meant that Betty was the only waitress for much of the night. Penny always gave Betty a creepy vibe that she couldn’t quite place her finger on. It didn’t help that almost every time she’d go to the bar to pick up her drinks, she’d see Penny slinking off to some dark corner of the club with yet another Serpent, leaving a line of unattended drinks at the pick up station. 

She’d just gone back to the bar to get another beer for one of her regulars, a slightly nervous man named Dilton, when Hog Eye slid a tray of shots in front of her. 

“These aren’t mine,” Betty said offhand as she looked for Dilton’s beer.

Hog Eye nudged them toward her again. “They are now. FP ordered these ten minutes ago and Penny’s nowhere to be found,” he said with more than a little agitation. 

Betty clenched her teeth even as she picked up the tray. She hated the idea that she was helping cover for Penny with FP, but she also didn’t want to make him look bad by giving the Wyrm a reputation for bad service. “Which table?” she asked with as much artificial pep as she could muster while simultaneously seething at Penny.

“Just look for FP,” Hog Eye said as he turned back to pulling pints.

Carefully balancing the tray of shots, Betty quickly scanned around the club, eventually picking FP out on the edge of one of the semi-private booths in the roped off section. 

As she got closer to the booth, she was just able to make out someone saying, “...two years is a long time! At least get a lap dance.” 

Coming to a stop in front of the booth, a man with an intense pair of blue eyes replied, “If you’re so hard up, Pea, you get one. There isn’t a dancer in here that could surprise me.” 

The man who must’ve been “Pea” shook his head, before turning his attention to FP to say, “What’s he expecting to be surprised by, FP? They’re  _ strippers.  _ It’s all kinda out there in the open already.”

The intense young man glowered across the table even as FP clapped a friendly, but warning arm over his shoulders. Just then, Pea’s attention turned to her.

“Buttery nipples!” he said excitedly, his mouth curving into a leer as he noticed Betty’s skin start to flush pink in embarrassment.

Betty’s embarrassment momentarily vanished as the man with the intense eyes and a scowl to match turned to look at her. Her skin suddenly felt tight like her body was a half size too small, and she instinctively licked her lips to counteract the dry mouth she found herself suffering. She wasn’t certain but she thought the blue eyes flickered to her mouth for the briefest of seconds, the scowl slowly morphing into a smirk. 

The part of her that was undeniably A Good Girl found his smug arrogance off putting: a stark reminder of some of the football players she knew in high school who assumed every girl wanted to sleep with them. As much as she might wish otherwise though, that part of her that she was scared to recognize, the part that had _liked_ _it_ when Archie had accidentally pulled her hair in bed, wanted to challenge him—make him _prove_ he had what it took to make her scream. 

Betty lowered her eyes to ostensibly focus on not knocking over any of the shots. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass herself any further by making it even clearer that she had little business working in a strip club.

She had almost finished transferring all the glasses to the table when she heard the young man he’d called “Pea” say, “Whaddya say, Blondie, how much for a lap dance?”

For a moment, Betty just stood gaping, caught off guard by the young man’s hopeful leer. Normally, she had no problems telling off men looking for a private audience. However, she’d never had a Serpent ask her for a lap dance, let alone in front of her boss. Before she could stammer out an excuse to get away from the table though, FP said, “You can put your wallet away, Sweet Pea. Betty only runs drinks here.”

Betty gave FP a grateful smile that he acknowledged with an almost imperceptible head nod, then she flipped her tray under her arm and beat a hasty retreat back to the bar. As she got back to Hog Eye and the rest of her waiting customers’ drinks, she noticed Penny leaning casually against the well-worn mahogany, a mocking sneer slashed across her face. 

“Aw, if it isn’t the scared baby bunny Betty. What has you scampering off this time?” Penny whinged, the high-pitched tone of her sarcasm sounding particularly grating given her normally gravelly voice. 

Instead of going off on her for abandoning her section of the club, Betty settled for shooting Penny an icy glare, silently reminding herself clubbing her co-worker with a drink tray was not the wisest idea—particularly not in front of so many witnesses. Penny’s mouth puckered, angry that she’d failed to stir up a more outspoken response from Betty. Just as she started opening her mouth to say something nastier, FP came storming over to the bar. 

For a minute, Betty was afraid that he was upset with her for refusing to bend her position on not dancing, but her fears were immediately allayed when he grabbed Penny’s bicep and started dragging her toward the back entrance. In the blink of an eye, Penny went from standing stock still in shock from being abruptly manhandled by their boss to swiping her hands at him, thin rivlets of blood beading up on his cheek from where she’d successfully managed to claw him. FP flung the arm he’d been holding away from him, the force causing Penny to stagger towards the door to the dressing room, as he suddenly bellowed, “Get your shit and get out, Penny! If I  _ ever _ find you anywhere near my premises again, you’ll  _ wish _ I’d called the cops on you now.”

Betty had never seen anyone with so much poisonous vitriol in their eyes as Penny had in that moment as she stared down FP. “Oh? You some kind of saint now, FP? Is that it?” Penny hissed maliciously. “Like you’ve never had a bump of jingle-jangle before.”

FP’s face started to contort in murderous rage, his skin taking on a mottled red color that reminded Betty of a chemical burn she’d seen in a health textbook once. “I told you,  _ no drugs _ . I made myself quite clear on it, Penny, when I agreed to rehire you,” he fumed. 

Penny’s eyes glittered with an odd sort of mania that made Betty’s blood run cold. Afraid of what her clearly unstable co-worker was about to do, Betty grabbed her drink tray on instinct and swung it at Penny as hard as she could. There was a loud screech followed by a dull  _ thump thump thump _ like a stack of cantaloupe toppling off a fruit cart. 

Suddenly, there was a crush of disembodied voices all speaking at once. 

“Holy shit!”

“Did you just see that?!”

“Are you ok?”

“Is she dead?”

  
“ _ Dad _ !”


	2. Private Dancer?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty gives her first private show and discovers she might enjoy dancing more than she thought....

Betty’s arm was still tingling from the reverberations of walloping Penny with her polycarbonate cocktail tray when she felt someone pulling her toward one of the private champagne rooms. Betty let herself be lead along to the quiet room, still more than a little in shock at her uncharacteristic outburst of violence. 

It was only after she heard the door to the room quietly click shut that she found herself able to focus enough to be able to recognize Toni as her rescuer from the sudden throng of people that had been attracted to the back of the bar by her brawl. 

Toni sat next to her on the crushed black velveteen chaise, patiently waiting until Betty felt ready to speak. Eventually, she turned to her and said in a hollow voice, “Am I going to jail?”

Without a word, Betty felt Toni wrap her in a tight hug before she pulled back, rubbing Betty’s shoulder soothingly for a second before saying, “Not tonight, Cooper. Besides, you’ve got over fifty people out there willing to testify that if not for you, who knows what else Penny was going to try to do to FP?” 

Betty heard herself speaking as if from the next room over as she said, “I wasn’t even sure what was going on. When I saw FP coming over, I thought he was going to fire me for not giving that guy Pea a lap dance.”

The warm, rich tones of Toni’s laughter caught Betty by such surprise that the unexpected sounds of mirth began pulling her out of her temporary shock.

“Sweet Pea would ask a dog for a lap dance if he was at least seventy-five percent sure it was a female,” Toni said with a smile.

“Oh,” Betty said, unsure of where Toni was possibly going with her train of thought.

Toni gave her a look that suggested Betty would eventually catch up with the joke before adding, “FP’s known Sweet Pea his whole life. He’d never hold it against you for not putting up with his horn-dog antics.”

Betty smiled in return, nodding her head in semi-confused comprehension. After a couple of minutes, she finally asked, “So what was the fight between Penny and FP about then?”

A small chill ran through Betty at the loss of Toni’s body heat as she pulled away to look her more directly in the face as she explained, “Another Serpent who’s friends with Jughead—a guy named Fangs—overheard Penny doing a drug deal in the men’s bathroom. A couple of years ago, Penny got involved with another gang—the Ghoulies—and started running drugs for them out of the club as a side gig. Jughead found out about it and tried to work something out with the Ghoulies without telling FP because his dad had already done time on a drug charge before, and he wanted to handle it before the cops possibly found out about the connection with the Wyrm.”

Toni paused, and Betty knew before she said another word that something must’ve gone terribly wrong. 

“Jughead made the mistake of taking Penny and the Ghoulies at their word, and it almost killed him. Afterwards, Penny disappeared for over a year, and FP sent Jug to Ohio until all the bad blood between the Ghoulies and the Serpents got settled,” Toni continued solemnly.

When Toni didn’t elaborate, Betty asked cautiously, “And what? Penny just came back like nothing happened?”

Toni shrugged before saying, “The rumor was that she and FP had some sort of history, so when she came back crying about how she’d been just as tricked as the rest of the Serpents, he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I guess he must’ve been more dubious than the rest of us knew about how involved she’d originally been in the whole drug dealing scheme.”

Betty silently soaked in everything Toni divulged. 

The voice in the back of her head that sounded dangerously like Archie’s tried to make her feel guilty about working at the Wyrm—that she’d gotten mixed up with violent gang members and drug dealers and she’d almost nearly killed someone as a result. She could already begin to feel the weight of her parents’ disapproval trying to crush her if word of  _ any _ of this got back to them. In her mind’s eye, she could already see the front page headline of  _ The Riverdale Register _ : “Former Riverdale High Prom Queen Brought Low By Drug-Dealing Gang Members.” (As much as her parents loathed family scandals, they weren’t above milking sensationalist journalism to sell a few extra copies of their newspaper.) 

Betty unconsciously flexed her right hand as she rubbed her upper arm. It was only when Toni started speaking again that Betty realized she wasn’t alone. 

“If you need a while to collect yourself, feel free to hangout in here. After what you just did, I’m sure FP won’t let anyone bother you,” she said as she stood up from the couch. 

Betty gave her a small half-smile in acknowledgment, and before she knew it, Toni was gone. 

*

It was easy to forget she was in a strip club when she was all by herself in the champagne room. The music from the main floor was completely muted by the soundproofing in the private lounge, and the decor was surprisingly understated between the black chaise, emerald green pillows and greenish-black walls. As she relaxed on the couch, Betty considered taking off her shoes, but she trusted the floor in the private room less than she trusted the floor in the communal bathroom in her dorm. 

The longer she sat, the heavier her limbs began to feel from running around the club all night, and the more tempted she was to sprawl out on the couch. Before long, Betty’s urge to grab a nap became increasingly more difficult to ignore, and she found herself hoping that FP would reconsider making her close up the club that night. Forcing herself to stand up so as not to succumb to the sweet siren call of sleep, she reached for the door knob to head back out to the main bar, only for the door to suddenly get yanked open from the other side. 

The unexpected movement caught her by surprise and she stumbled back against the couch. The sensuous feeling of the plush velveteen tickled the backs of her knees as she dropped down with a small  _ oomph _ , falling back on her elbows from the transferred momentum. As Betty looked up from her undignified position on the chaise, she half expected to see Midge hovering uncertainly in the doorway, but instead found an intense pair of blue eyes staring at her. The eyes drifted from her ankles to her face, and Betty’s skin heated up as a deep pink flush bloomed across her body. She ducked her head against her shoulder, mortified that a strange man had caught her in such a compromising position. 

There was a quiet shuffling sound then the whisper click of the door shutting. Betty sagged further back on her elbows, her eyes shut as she silently prayed for the night to be over already. She heard a strangled cough and her eyes shot open as she whipped her head back around to locate the sound. Standing not two feet from her in the enclosed space was the scowling young man from FP’s booth….only, this time he  _ wasn’t  _ scowling. 

After months of working at the strip club, Betty had begun to categorize the many different types of  _ leers _ she’d come across. There were the usual drunk and horny leers. There were the leers that stemmed from loneliness and a desire for human connection. There were even the “this is my first time in a strip club and I think I’m  _ supposed  _ to be leering” leers. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever seen anyone with a look quite like his though. His eyes seemed to blaze in the intimate dimness of the champagne room, and yet he also seemed to give off an almost academic air of indifference—as if the facts that she was nearly naked and (inadvertently) sprawled out in a come-fuck-me pose barely deserved any of his attention. The dichotomy between the heat in his eyes and the frosty set of his lips was unsettling.

As the seconds started to stretch on, her elbows began to ache from holding up her body, and she could feel a tremor start in her biceps. There wasn’t really a dignified way for her to adjust her position on the couch with him standing there, and she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to ask him for help. As she tried to work through her options, she found herself asking in a annoyed huff, “Can I help you?”

For a minute, he kept watching her, the only hint of a reaction being a slight tick in his jaw. Betty’s heart began to race. ‘ _ Oh my God. I can’t believe I mouthed off to my boss’ son. This is not good _ ,’ she thought frantically.

Before her self-preservation urge to apologize could kick into high gear though, the cool press of his lips curved into a full-blown smirk. The path from her brain to her mouth short-circuited as she found herself suddenly transfixed by the sensuousness of his mouth. She nibbled her bottom lip instinctively and his eyes drifted down to her mouth. It was hard for her to tell given the lighting in the room, but she could’ve sworn his blue eyes started to get darker. Her skin began to feel tighter as her heart started racing again, and she suddenly felt acutely aware of a heaviness to her breasts that she could’ve sworn hadn’t been present moments earlier.

“You are an enigma,” she heard him say, but he said it so softly that she was nearly positive she would’ve missed it, but for the fact that she couldn’t take her attention off his mouth. 

It was an odd comment and one she was fairly convinced he hadn’t intended her to hear; however, as the words bounced around her head she wasn’t sure how she should feel about them.

Repelled?

Indignant?

_ Flattered _ ?

The tremors in her biceps intensified. Just then, a charley horse caused her left arm to seize up. Betty let out a yowl as she felt the sudden and intense pain from the muscle cramp, and she couldn’t help but collapse backward onto the chaise. She lay there whimpering, tears quietly leaking out of the corners of her eyes, as she curled in on herself, wishing the locked up muscles would unclench. 

Her thoughts were so focused on the acute discomfort in her arm that she didn’t realize he had moved closer to the couch until he was crouching down next to her and gently taking her arm in his hands. His hands wrapped easily around her elbow and her wrist, his fingers forming two perfectly fitted manacles. She tried to focus her thoughts on his fingers carefully kneading the muscles around her elbow as he used her wrist to slowly articulate her arm up and down to simultaneously stretch them out. As his fingers pressed methodically against her flesh, she eventually noticed the sharp pain in her arm was beginning to dull.

Betty let out a contented sigh as she turned all of her thoughts over to how  _ nice _ it felt to have his hands on her. It had been awhile since anyone other than her sister or Veronica had touched her in such a comforting way, and yet, she couldn’t deny that her body had never responded quite so... _ eagerly _ ...to Polly’s hugs or Veronica’s backrubs. Her heart started racing as the realization hit her that she was getting  _ turned on _ by the simple act of kindness FP’s son was showing her. She felt like a tiny fire had been set under her skin as she felt a deep blush spread over her body, and she screwed her eyes up tighter, too embarrassed to look at him.

“If you keep blushing like that around potential customers,” she heard his voice say a little teasingly, “my Dad’s going to wind up christening you something like ‘Strawberries ’N Cream’ as a stage name.” 

Her eyes shot open as she reflexively said, “I’m not a dancer.”

He smirked at her, and she realized immediately that he’d done it on purpose to get a reaction out of her. A part of her wanted to glare at him—the part of her that thought a pair of twenty-somethings like them should be beyond the “playground teasing” stage of getting attention. But, as she found herself mesmerized by the quixotic mix of expressions swirling in his eyes, the part of her that was all  _ woman _ couldn’t deny that the intimacy of their proximity along with the look in his eyes and the sense of familiarity she had from his hands still touching her arm were all combining  _ to do things _ to her. Betty tried not to squirm with mixed success, the flowy panels of her negligee falling open, exposing all of the creamy skin of her torso from just underneath her breasts to where the waistband of her thong sat low on her hips.To his credit, she was impressed that he barely reacted to the fact that she’d subconsciously unwrapped herself like a present for him. If not for the fact that the hand that had simply been resting on her elbow squeezed her unexpectedly, she wasn’t entirely certain that she would’ve known that she’d affected him at all. 

She felt like there was something she wanted to ask him, but his thumb started absently rubbing the side of her elbow, and the even rhythmic pressure was having a disconcertingly hypnotic effect on her. As she struggled to remember her question, his breath whispered across the delicate skin of her wrist and her skin broke out in goosebumps as her nipples hardened into tight pebbles. Betty did her best to swallow the whimper that threatened to escape her, but she knew there was nothing she could do to hide her body’s reaction to him given their proximity. 

“This hardly seems like the place I’d expect to find someone who’s pretty adamant about not being confused for a dancer,” he said, his lips practically brushing the inside of her arm as he spoke.

Betty shivered, then glared at him as the smugness radiating off him started taking some of the oxygen out of the room. “What can I say? I do it for the employee perks,” she quipped.

He laughed—a warm, rich sound that made her pussy tingle, and that same part of her that hadn’t been all that upset when she and Archie had broken up desperately wanted to know what other reactions he could draw from her body. “I wouldn’t have thought a woman like you would consider dealing with rowdy Serpents, and having horn dogs pawing at you and listening to wolf whistles all night  _ perks _ ,” he said with a disbelieving eyebrow raise.

There was nothing inherently offensive about the way he asked the question, and she  _ knew _ that he was right:  _ a woman like her _ had no business being in an establishment like the Whyte Wyrm, let alone working there. Despite that objectively reasonable conclusion, she couldn’t deny it set her teeth on edge a little bit that he was so confident that he knew who she was.

Channeling the part of her that had been brave enough to hit Penny with the drink tray, Betty said with a hint of huskiness in her voice, “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m  _ all about _ the beast within.”

“Sure. Whatever you say,” he said, chuckling in the kind of dismissive way that Archie would whenever she’d say something that wasn’t in line with his image of the perfect 1950s suburban housewife.

She couldn’t quite explain why, but the fact that he didn’t believe her bothered her on a fundamental level. Although it had stung and annoyed her whenever Archie reacted the same way, she’d been able to easily brush it off—perhaps subconsciously aware that they didn’t really have a future together, so his opinion of her was a little irrelevant. There was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on about FP’s son though. She  _ didn’t _ want him to dismiss her so easily; she wanted him to believe she  _ did _ fit in in this world—the same way that she’d argued so persuasively with FP to get hired in the first place.

Sliding her arm out of his hands, she sat up with an elegant fluidity that she imagined was how Venus had uncoiled herself from her clamshell. He glanced up at her from where he was still crouched next to the couch, his eyebrows creeping closer to his hairline. Betty fixed her green eyes on him, giving him a sultry look, before she gently caressed one side of his face as she asked, “What’s your name?”

She caught sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing from the corner of her eye, although the majority of her attention was focused on the blazing hunger that was shining from his intense blue eyes, and she couldn’t help crowing a little on the inside that she’d obviously caught him off guard. 

“Jughead,” he eventually said, a noticeable burr coloring his voice. 

Betty purred as she rolled his name over in her head before she patted the chaise and moved to stand up. As he moved to trade places on the couch with her, Betty reached up and removed the elastic securing her ponytail in place. She shook her hair out as she turned around to face him, letting the soft blonde waves playfully frame her face. Jughead stared at her—mouth not quite agog, but definitely surprised by the abrupt shift in Betty’s demeanor,  _ and she liked it _ .

Giving him her best set of “bedroom eyes,” Betty reached for his face again to push back an errant lock of silky black hair that was starting to fall into his eyes before she said, “Hi Juggie. You can call me Dark Betty. Care for a dance?”

She held his gaze for a long minute until he almost imperceptibly nodded his head. Betty gave him a secretive smile before stalking over to where the music selection for the room was stored. As she deliberately swayed her hips while she crossed the room, Betty couldn’t help but relish in the power she felt from taking ownership over her sexuality. It was still true that she wasn’t interested in being up on stage—the risk of word getting back to Hal and Alice, and what the potential fallout from that might mean not quite worth it to her—but here, in an isolated champagne room with a man that had no ties to her hometown, she felt set free. ‘Besides,’ she thought as she flipped through the available CDs, ‘it’s not like I’m going to sleep with him. This isn’t going to be much worse than half of the dances I had to perform for cheerleading back in high school.’

Her eyes skimmed the various song titles immediately discounting some of the songs she had come to recognize as industry “standards” like “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” She was just about to flip to the next CD when her eyes fell on one she  _ definitely _ didn’t expect to see. Throwing a coy glance over her shoulder at Jughead, she thought back to his earlier comment about wanting to be surprised. Opening up the jewel case, she quickly popped out the CD and put it into the stereo before forwarding ahead to the song she wanted. It took a few seconds, but eventually the lyrics started piping into the intimate space.

_ Sucker love is heaven sent _

_ You pucker up, our passion’s spent _

_ My heart’s a tart, your body’s rent _

_ My body’s broken, yours is bent _

Focusing on the song’s bass line, Betty twisted her hips in time with the music as she stalked back toward him. As she got nearer to where he was sitting on the chaise, she did a little twirl and the gauzy panels of her negligee floated up and out like the inevitable slow motion ballroom reveal of every period romance film she’d ever seen. When she brought her attention back to Jughead, she noticed a tension in his shoulders, which seemed to be connected in part to the white knuckle grip he had on the velveteen couch cushion underneath him. Betty smirked then stepped further into his space.

She ground her ass against him, the denim of his jeans giving her exposed cheeks some light rug burn as she writhed in his lap. Jughead grunted quietly making Betty smile to herself as she draped herself backward against his chest, giving him a clear view of her cleavage as she massaged her increasingly achy breasts. Although she appreciated that he was following the “no contact” rule, she couldn’t deny that a surprisingly large part of her wished he wouldn’t. She squeezed her breasts tighter and casually flicked her thumbs across her erect nipples, whimpering as the sensation went straight to her pussy. Jughead answered her whimper with a low rumbling growl, and it was then that she realized that part of the source of her rug burn was the erection that was straining against his jeans. Her mind went blank as she started piecing together just how well-endowed he was based on the outline of the engorged flesh. It had been a hot minute since she’d hooked up with someone ( _ Trev something-or-other, who she’d met at some frat party she’d gotten dragged out to by a girl on their hall named Ethel _ ) and as pleasant as the encounter had been, he hadn’t exactly needed to “pick a pant leg” when he went to the tailor. 

The song ended a lot sooner than she expected it to, and she found herself both disappointed and relieved. On the one hand, she was actually having a surprising amount of  _ fun _ teasing him with her body. On the other hand though, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to resist her increasing urge to climb him like a tree as they both apparently got more turned on by her performance. Betty hovered in his lap a few seconds longer than she’d intended, unconsciously beginning to settle in against his chest. It was only after he made some strangled grunt noise that she realized what she’d been doing and quickly stood up and backed away from him.

Betty did another little princess spin as she turned back around to face him only to find him looking at her with an odd sort of lusty-yet-frustrated scowl. Her breath hitched as her body’s “spidey sense” picked up on the undeniably charged atmosphere in the room, waiting to see if he was going to kiss her. After another minute of silence though, all Jughead said was, “You’re right, Betty. You’re not a dancer,” before he abruptly left the room. 

She stood watching the door for several minutes afterwards, a mix of anger, disappointment, and sexual frustration combining to roil the acid in her stomach. From the way his body had quite clearly reacted to her, she found it disingenuous to suggest that she’d done something wrong and that he hadn’t enjoyed the dance. Betty didn’t want to look too closely at why his rejection stung her pride so much—it wasn’t like he’d said something that she hadn’t spent months telling people herself. Closing her eyes, she took a couple slow breaths in through her nose, not entirely trusting herself not to tell off Jughead for his smug arrogance if she ran into him again out on the floor. 

Once she felt sufficiently calm, she took a second to put her hair back up into a ponytail before checking her negligee and her thong one last time to ensure everything was in its proper place. By the time she made it back to the floor, the feeling in the room had decidedly changed. Unlike when she’d started her shift, the rowdy but celebratory air amongst the crowd had morphed into pure rowdiness with nearly all of the non-Serpent customers having left at least an hour earlier. As she crossed the room from the entrance to the champagne rooms back to the bar, she casually scanned the floor. Even though she told herself she was just keeping an eye out for FP, in the back of her mind she knew she was really looking for Jughead, although whether to avoid him or tell him off, she wasn’t entirely sure.

To both her relief and disappointment, she didn’t see either Jones amongst the crowd of familiar leather jackets spread throughout the bar, impatiently waiting for the next set to start. Betty caught Hog Eye looking at her, and she blushed as she suddenly remembered that she’d left the Wyrm without a waitress while she’d been occupied with the Serpent Prince. 

She managed to get out “I am so sor…” before Hog Eye cut her off with a shake of his head. Betty felt even worse. Hog Eye wasn’t normally one to chastise and the fact that he didn’t seem interested in her apology stung. Deflating a little, Betty hung her head as she prepared for a deserved lecture on her lack of work ethic. 

“FP’s worried about how worked up some of the Serpents are getting about Penny,” the older man said.

Betty’s head popped up as she gave him her undivided attention. 

“After Midge does her set, FP’s giving everybody one more round on the house, and then he’s gonna tell them to get the fuck out,” he added with a tired half smile. 

Her eyes drifted to the cracked clock face behind Hog Eye. It was almost 2 am—the state mandated closing time—so it wasn’t like FP was really disrupting much. 

“Where  _ is _ Midge?” Betty asked, her brow wrinkling up in confusion. 

Hog Eye shrugged before he turned back to pulling pints for a pair of Serpents, who had just approached the bar. 

Given how green Midge had been at the start of her shift, Betty had an uncomfortable feeling about where the poor girl was. 

As soon as she opened the door to the dressing room, she heard an all-too-familiar sound. She headed toward the back only to find Toni in her street clothes rubbing comforting circles on Midge’s back as the other woman continued retching into a small black wastebasket. Betty quickly scanned the dressing room. Other than Toni (who was off the clock), Midge (who was out of commission it seemed), and her, there was no one around to sub in for the last set. 

Betty’s heart started racing.

Her earlier irritation at Jughead’s dismissiveness flared to life again as a thought crossed her mind.

Before she could overthink it, she said, “Toni, can I ask you for a favor?”

*

She stood on the stage in the dark, leaning against the stripper pole, as light flickered around the stage landing everywhere except on her as the first few notes of the song started up, and she tried to draw strength from the pole’s sturdy presence. Once the spotlight landed on her, there really wasn’t going to be any way for her to go back. Just then, she heard Angeline Ball’s voice through the speakers start singing, “ _ I can’t stand the rain ’gainst my window _ ,” and a moment later the spotlight hit her. 

  
The clear vinyl raincoat she’d borrowed from Midge crinkled as she rubbed herself against the pole like a cat, toying with the jacket’s snaps for a few seconds before carefully unpopping the first couple. Betty shimmied her shoulders as she slowly paced the stage, teasing the crowd with periodic glimpses of her skin as she allowed the raincoat to slip enough to show off her collarbone. As she approached the end of the stage, she suddenly leaned forward, her wavy blonde hair whipping around her head, and she used her hair to distract from the fact that she’d opened up two more of the snaps on the raincoat. When she stood back up, the coat was unbuttoned down to her navel, but she held the two sides with her hand to keep them from flapping around, not quite ready for her big reveal. She pranced back to the stripper pole with a jaunty high step, aggressively swinging her hips the whole way, earning her a number of enthusiastic catcalls. The song hit its crescendo just as she reached the pole and she finally popped open the last snap, flinging the coat onto the stage with a dramatic flourish. Taking a deep breath, she slowly leaned backwards into a handstand, giving the raucous crowd of bikers a perfectly unobstructed view of her naked torso, her last attempted shred of modesty a pair of green rhinestone cobra pasties Toni had given her to cover her nipples. Once she had her weight stabilized with her arms, she started to raise her legs up until she wrapped them around the stripper pole. Locking her thighs tightly around the cool cylindrical aluminum, she engaged her abs and slowly lifted her torso parallel to the floor. Her stomach muscles started to quiver almost immediately, and she could feel the burn from overusing parts of her body that she hadn’t worked out since her high school cheerleading days. Betty focused her attention on her protesting muscles to keep her mind from thinking too much about the fact that she was flashing a roomful of bikers...and that she actually  _ enjoyed  _ the wolf whistles and catcalls that her act inspired. She incrementally loosened her legs’ hold on the pole, allowing her body weight to slowly slide her down to the floor right as the last note of the song died, and the stage abruptly went dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song lyrics are from Placebo's "Every Me Every You" and the Angeline Ball/The Commitments version of "I Can't Stand the Rain."


	3. Take Me for a Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead get intimately acquianted when Betty agrees to give Jughead a ride home from the Whyte Wyrm.....

Betty grabbed the raincoat as she quickly made her way off the stage in the dark, taking full advantage of the anonymity to rush back to the dressing room before her adrenaline rush wore off and she started freaking out about what she’d done. 

She was still sitting in front of Veronica’s usual mirror fifteen minutes later, her hands holding onto the wood stool with a death grip, when Toni popped her head in from the alleyway entrance. 

“Not bad, Cooper,” she said with a dry smile, “If you play your cards right, you could be up there regularly after tonight.”

Betty curled her fingers tighter against the wood causing the stool to squeal in protest. 

“Or not,” Toni dragged out as she took stock of Betty’s painfully straight posture. A beat passed then she added, “FP just wanted me to tell you to drop by the office when you’re done getting changed. Hog Eye already announced last call, so you don’t have to worry about running any more drinks tonight.”

Betty just nodded mutely, her eyes never leaving her reflection. She barely even registered the door clicking shut as Toni slipped back outside. After she finished soaking off the pasties with Veronica’s spare bottle of adhesive remover, she pulled on her satin bra and her blue and white sweater as quickly as she could before taking the time to make sure she buttoned up the front of her corduroy skirt correctly. She leaned over gingerly to tie the laces on her Keds: now that her adrenaline was mostly gone, she was beginning to feel acutely aware of her protesting abdominal muscles. Betty silently debated whether it was worth it to throw her hair back up in a ponytail, ultimately deciding against it. On the off chance FP was planning to give her a pass on closing up the bar, it would save her a few precious minutes when she went to sneak in a shower back at the dorms. 

As Betty crossed the floor to the stairs that would take her up to FP’s office, she finally understood why her co-workers always came in the back entrance when they got to work. Nearly every Serpent she passed turned to look at her with a suggestive leer or a hopeful request for a date. Although “Dark Betty” found the attention invigorating, the part of her that still felt compelled to protect her “wholesome” reputation pressed her to scurry passed the throngs of bikers as quickly as possible. 

*

By the time she emerged from FP’s office, it was nearly 3:15 am. She was $500 richer than she’d expected to be  _ and _ FP had given her a reprieve on closing up the bar (a ‘thank you’ for her services with Penny)—both of which should’ve made her happy. Unfortunately, she couldn’t shake her disappointment at the part of their “talk” where he’d told her in no uncertain terms that her performance would be her first  _ and last _ time dancing at the Wyrm. Given that she’d spent her entire time working at the Whyte Wyrm repeating  _ ad nauseum _ that she was most definitely  _ not _ a dancer, she felt she wasn’t exactly in a position to press FP on why he wouldn’t be open to revisiting his decision given that she’d clearly had a (limited) change of heart. Instead, she’d simply said, “I understand,” while trying not to sulk as she left his office. 

When she got out to the parking lot, it was almost entirely empty save for two motorcycles and her black and silver De Tomaso Pantera, which appeared to have a large shape sitting on its hood. As she got closer, the shadowy blob uncoiled itself and she was faintly able to recognize Jughead’s face in the late evening/early morning gloom. Seeing him hunkered down on her car like some kind of gargoyle brought back all of her earlier annoyance over how dismissive he’d been in the champagne room, and that—along with the lateness of the hour and the fact she was no longer on the clock—stripped her mouth of the self-interest filter that had kept her from going off on him earlier in the evening. 

“I swear to God,” she fumed, “if you scratched up my paint job, we’re going to have a problem.”

He hopped off her car with a lithe gracefulness she wasn’t expecting, and it almost annoyed her even more that he hadn’t given her an excuse to chew him out when she failed to find any damage to her vehicle. Giving him a tired glare, she asked, “There something you needed?”

His lips quirked to the side in a half-smile before he said, “I wouldn’t say no to a ride.”

Her pussy started to tingle as her mind unhelpfully reminded her of the impressive endowment she’d felt earlier that evening, but she tamped down her libido before she did something foolish. She looked pointedly at the two bikes next to her car and raised her eyebrow.

Jughead gave a little nonchalant shrug as he glanced in the direction of the bikes before he said, “I’ve got a flat, and FP  _ will _ call the cops if I hotwire his bike.” 

Betty leaned over the hood of her car to confirm the existence of the flat tire. As she stood back up, she caught his eyes fluttering for a second and she realized that he’d checked out her ass as she’d been laid out over her car. She grinned to herself. 

“Where are you trying to get to?” she asked in a distinctly friendlier tone.

“Sunnyside Trailer Park,” he said with a borderline defiant look on his face as he watched for her reaction. 

Betty jerked her head in a “get in” motion as she tossed over her shoulder, “You navigate, I’ll drive.”

*

They didn’t speak much for the first several minutes of the ride beyond Jughead periodically calling out different turns, and the unspoken tension was beginning to make the air inside the car cloying. It was almost like being on a blind date without “the date” part. 

Eventually, the charged silence became too much for her.

“I heard you just moved back from Ohio. What was that like?” Betty said in what she hoped was a casual voice. 

Jughead twisted in his seat to better lean against the door, and she could feel his eyes roving up and down her body. She was on the verge of squirming under his scrutiny when he eventually said, “It wasn’t home. Not that my mom tried very hard.”

His raw honesty caught her by surprise and she found herself apologizing by instinct. He just shrugged before adding, “It’s not your fault.”

A beat passed, then he opened his mouth to ask her a question. Before he could get a word out though, Betty said, “My parents lost all my college tuition in a bad investment deal.”

Betty hadn’t admitted her tuition situation quite so bluntly to anyone outside of the financial aid office, and she had to fight the urge to cringe at discussing a “dirty” topic like money so openly. She could feel his eyes boring into the side of her head like he could dissect all of the thoughts he found there and it made her nervous. 

“That explains why you work at the Wyrm—not why you _like_ _it_ ,” he said, his voice dropping half an octave lower. The deeper burr in his voice set everything nerve ending in her body on fire, and she forced herself not to whimper. 

To distract from her sudden discomfort at being called out, she feebly punted, “Who says I like it?”

His eyebrows quirked in disbelief before he said quietly, “Says the person who keeps insisting she’s not a dancer.”

The way he said it—slightly under his breath, almost like he was getting a dig in at her—set off the compressed annoyance she’d stuffed down ever since he’d run out on her in the champagne room. Pulling off the highway onto a semi-secluded logging access road, she put the car in park and turned off the engine before she turned to glare at him. 

“What is your problem with me?” she fumed.

His lips quirked to the side and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss him or slap him. 

“I don’t have a problem with you,” he said dryly, and she decided she definitely wanted to slap him.

She threw up her hands as she said, “ _ Fine _ . Then why do you seem to care so much about my dancing?”

It was Jughead’s turn to deflect as he said a little defensively, “Who says I care about your dancing?”

Betty wasn’t quite sure what it was—something about his tone, or perhaps a small shift in his body language—but she suddenly knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was part of the reason FP had banned her from dancing. 

Her eyes cut to slits as she growled, “Did you tell your dad not to let me dance again?”

His eyes flickered to the windshield as he said, “FP makes his own decisions.”

“That’s not a  _ no _ ,” she hissed at his non-answer. 

When he brought his full attention back to her face, his eyes were blazing, and she couldn’t deny the intensity staring back at her was getting her turned on. 

“Yes!” he finally burst out, “I told FP I didn’t like the idea of you dancing. There! Are you happy?”

She gaped at him. Even though she’d goaded him into responding, she hadn’t entirely dismissed the idea that FP had decided to ban her on his own. Spluttering for a few seconds, Betty eventually managed to get out, “I don’t understand. Why do you even care?”

Moving as quickly as a cobra strike, Jughead reached across the car and pulled Betty in for a searing kiss. She opened her mouth in surprise only to find his tongue suddenly curling around hers. Betty moaned into the kiss right before her hands flew to his face holding him even closer. His mouth ravaged hers, and she couldn’t believe how eagerly she was responding. 

Jughead feathered kisses along her jaw, diligently working his way toward her ear. She felt a slight sting as he nipped at the fleshy part of her earlobe before he whispered, “I don’t like the idea of you dancing at the Wyrm because I don’t share, and I don’t want your dancing to fuel anybody’s fantasies but mine.”

Betty threw her head back as he started kissing and sucking on her neck, and she teased, “Just your fantasies, huh?”

His teeth closed around the delicate skin of her neck and he growled. The sound went straight to her pussy, and she couldn’t help but add, “I think you’re all talk.”

Jughead’s fingers curled in her hair in warning as he said, “Didn’t anyone ever warn you not to tease bad men?”

Betty pushed herself away from Jughead in order to better look him in the eyes. His blue eyes were on fire with challenge and desire, and she made a split second decision.

“Who said anything about teasing?” she said, a moment before she swung her leg over the gearbox to straddle Jughead’s lap. As his eyebrows raised in temporary challenge, her voice dropped to a sultry whisper as she breathed against his lips, “ _ I aim to misbehave _ .”

She braced herself against his shoulder as she reached to the side, her fingers looking for the toggle to lower his seat back. Jughead captured her lips again just as she found the small lever, and the two of them fell backwards as the seat back dropped without warning. Betty could feel her breasts starting to ache from their need for stimulation, so she rubbed herself against his chest. The pressure and muted friction did little more than tease her hardening nipples, and she whimpered in frustration into his mouth. 

Betty was so lost in her own need as she writhed against Jughead that she didn’t realize he’d been trying to get her attention until he nipped her bottom lip. The sharp sting, while not unpleasant, caught her off guard and she pushed herself away from his chest to better look at Jughead. His eyes were wild and his lips looked like he’d been eating a cherry water ice, and Betty couldn’t deny how proud she was that  _ she _ was the one responsible for his disheveled state. 

“How do you like to be touched?” Jughead asked raggedly. 

She stared at him. No one she’d ever slept with before had bothered to ask her that question. Betty unconsciously ran her tongue over the part of her lip that Jughead had bitten. 

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Betty said as she leaned back down to kiss him again. “I’ll let you know if I want you to stop.” 

Jughead grinned as he captured her lips again, one hand twisted in her hair, the other locked on her hip. As he tightened his grip on her hair, she ground herself harder against him. His clothed erection pressed against the flimsy barrier of her thong, pulling the lace tight across her engorged clit, and she purred from the stimulation. He chuckled into her mouth as he thrust his pelvis more forcefully against her. 

As much as Betty enjoyed making out with Jughead and dry humping in her car, her pussy throbbed from its need for more. Tugging on his hair a little, she littered kisses across his face as she worked her way over to his ear.

“Not that this isn’t fun,” she said, her voice dripping with desire, “but tell me you have a condom.”

The hand that had been squeezing her hip coasted over her exposed thigh to pat the side of his jacket. Betty breathed a sigh of relief, but before she could reach for the pocket he’d indicated, she heard him muse, “I’m not some piece of meat. Who says I wanted to have sex?”

She pushed herself back from his chest, bringing her full body weight to bear against the erection rubbing tauntingly against her slit. Quirking a disbelieving eyebrow at him, she said, “I’m no expert, but it certainly feels like you want to have sex.”

His eyes blazed in challenge before he replied, “I’m well acquainted with self love. What I’m waiting to be convinced about is why I want to have sex.”

Betty stared at him, cold rage beginning to well up inside her. He’d shot her down at the Wyrm and now he was shooting her down over  _ sex _ ? The affront to her pride was more than she was willing to tolerate. “Fuck you, Jughead,” she seethed. “This is the second time tonight you’ve shot me down. I won’t let there be a third. You talk about fantasies, but if that’s all I am to you, just be a man and tell me that.”

As her final words came out of her mouth, she turned away from him as she got ready to climb back into the driver’s seat. She’d barely lifted her leg to clear the gear shift when she suddenly felt two fingers sliding teasingly, but deliberately, up the inside of her thigh. Betty temporarily froze in shock, giving Jughead enough time to drag his fingers all the way to where she’d soaked through the tiny scrap of lace covering her pussy. His fingers stroked her through her underwear and she whimpered as she braced herself against the side of the driver’s seat, burying her face against her bicep. 

“I’m sorry, Betty. I’m not good with women. I never seem to have the right words,” he whispered as he continued to caress her with maddeningly even pressure. “Let me crystal clear about something though. I thought you were attractive since the minute you first walked over to FP’s table, but I’ve wanted to bend you over and rail you since I saw you take out Penny. However, you keep telling everyone who’ll listen that you aren’t a dancer, and that makes me wonder how comfortable  _ you’d  _ feel associating with  _ me _ because I don’t think I have the willpower for this to be a one night stand.”

Betty whimpered into her arm for a moment before she slowly turned her attention back to Jughead’s face. She forced herself not to get distracted by the way he was teasing her as she slowly took a breath and said, “I  _ liked _ dancing for you tonight. I even liked dancing for the Serpents. You’re right though. When I started at the Wyrm I was afraid my parents would find out and turn it into A Thing, and I thought that as long as I didn’t dance, I could keep them in the dark. But I’m not doing anything illegal or wrong, so why should I care, right?” Leaning closer to his ear, Betty murmured, “They definitely  _ don’t  _ get a say in who I fuck.” She paused for effect before she added, “Or in who I choose to date.”

Just as the last of her words started to die down, Betty felt Jughead’s fingers push the crotch of her thong to the side a second before his index finger started sliding into her pussy. She gasped. Even though she knew in an academic sense that he was likely going to finger her, the actual feeling of his finger inside her still caught her a little by surprise. His finger was long and tapered, and she could faintly tell there was some mild callousing on his fingertip as he stroked the inside of her cunt. As his index finger probed her, the tip of his middle finger teasingly brushed her aroused labia, and she whimpered from her need for more stimulation. 

Betty wiggled desperately as he mercilessly teased her until she eventually cracked. With a demanding whinge, she said, “You’ve made your point.  _ Just fuck me already _ .”

Jughead tutted, “What exactly is the point you think I’m trying to make?”

She glared at him before she replied, “That you’re a smug, evil bastard?”

Jughead laughed and her pussy clenched reflexively around his finger. 

“I don’t do casual and I don’t share,” he said with a meaningful rumble, “so if either of those things is a problem for you, tell me now.”

“Can I still dance for you?” Betty asked after a beat.

“Every night, if you want,” he said with a hungry glint in his eye. 

Betty attacked his lips as she said between kisses, “I’m not much of a casual person anyway, and I  _ definitely  _ don’t share.”

There was a flurry of activity as Betty worked to ruck her skirt up higher while Jughead simultaneously added a second finger to the finger he was pistoning in and out of her pussy. She barely had a chance to get acclimated to the feeling of his fingers when he began scissoring them back and forth. 

“God, you’re so tight. I don’t want to hurt you,” he said raggedly as Betty reached between them to unzip his jeans. 

“Don’t worry. You do something that doesn’t feel good, and I’ll tell you,” she said breathlessly.

With a few more tries, she was able to get his jeans opened enough for her to pull his pulsating cock out of his boxers. She was staring at the mottled reddish-pinkish-tannish skin, watching as precum slowly seeped out of the head of his cock, and her heart skipped a beat. Betty had  _ never _ slept with someone so well endowed and a small part of her wondered if her earlier reassurance was premature. His erection so thoroughly distracted her that she didn’t realize he’d grabbed the condom out of his jacket until he’d pressed the foil packet into the palm of her hand with an offhand comment about “thanking Sweet Pea for his worrying interest in my sex life.”

She ripped open the foil on autopilot, only dragging her attention away from his cock long enough to make sure she was rolling on the latex in the right direction. Jughead brushed her hair back behind her ear with one hand while the other held the base of his cock. Betty gave him a soft smile before she covered his hand with her own and lined up his erection with the slippery entrance to her pussy. She rubbed the head of his cock back and forth across her slit, using it to tease the sensitive hood of her clit. 

The head of his cock slipped inside her, and she took her time sinking down on him. Despite her arousal, the thickness of his shaft made her pussy sting as her muscles stretched to accommodate his sizable girth. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip as she concentrated on her breathing, trying not to let the unfamiliar burn let her fight-or-flight instinct kick in. 

Betty was so focused on inching his cock deeper inside herself that she didn’t realize at first that he was rubbing soothing circles over her thigh and ass with his free hand. As the friction began to warm up her skin though, she started relaxing due to the hypnotic repetition of his hand, allowing him to sink a little deeper inside her. 

Her pussy felt like she was stretched to her breaking point as she said, “I’m not sure I can take any more of you.”

She heard him swallow before his thumb started rubbing against her exposed clit, and she keened from the unexpected stimulation as she sank down on the last inch and a half of his cock. 

“You are so beautiful, Betty,” Jughead said reverently, “You have no idea how difficult it was for me not to cum just from watching your pussy stretch to take my cock.” 

His thumb continued rubbing circles against her clit, and that along with his voice and the fullness in her cunt, were combining to set her nerves on fire. She whimpered as she inadvertently rocked her hips forward causing her pussy to clench against his thickness.

He groaned almost piteously, and the part of her that was “Dark Betty” wanted to hear the wrecked sound again. 

“Do you like it when I squeeze your cock with my cunt?” she teased, channeling the same confidence that inspired her to dance for Jughead and the Serpents so as not to stumble over the filth coming out of her mouth.

“You have no idea,” he said as he started rubbing her clit harder.

“Tell me,” she half whispered as she rocked upward, feeling his cock draw a little out of her.

“Look at me,” Jughead said in a dark commanding tone.

She forced herself to focus her hooded gaze on his eyes rather than on the roof of her car. His blue eyes mesmerized her with their intensity, and as much as she wanted to squirm away from them, she found that she couldn’t. 

Maintaining eye contact, Jughead said in a quiet growl that _did_ _things_ to her, “Your pussy fits around me perfectly—almost like we were made for each other. I could watch you ride me for hours as you use my body over and over to get yourself off.” 

With every word out of his mouth, Betty began to piston herself faster against him, her body finally loosened up enough for her not to feel any more stinging in her pussy. Jughead tried to keep up rubbing her clit, but his steady pressure became increasingly erratic as her speed picked up. 

“ _ Kiss me _ ,” he suddenly demanded.

Betty dropped her head forward, and their lips connected in a searing kiss as they each tried to assert their dominance. By closing the distance between them, Betty was forced to sacrifice some of her leverage, but she didn’t mind as her slower pacing allowed Jughead to play with her clit more consistently again. 

She pulled back from their kiss just far enough for her to whisper against his lips, “ _ Make me cum for you _ .” 

He nipped her bottom lip as he rubbed her clit harder causing her to moan needily into his mouth. She did her best to rock her hips in time with his increasing stimulation, but to limited success. Jughead broke off their kiss to lean his forehead against hers as he started babbling, “Come on, Betty. Be a good girl for me. Show me how hard you can milk my cock when you cum. I want to feel you spasming around me as you scream my name. Cum for me, baby. I know you want to cum good and hard for me.”

Betty whimpered as she turned all of her focus to her pussy and her clit and the way his body was setting nerves on fire that she never knew she had. “God, I’m so close, Juggie,” she whined, “I can feel it  _ right there _ . I just need  _ more _ .” 

Jughead used his free hand to grab Betty’s hair as he ordered, “ _ Cum for me, Betty. Squeeze my cock with your cunt like a good girl _ .”

He had barely finished speaking when Betty suddenly gave a short high-pitched yip a second before she started spasming violently against him. She sagged against his chest as her body turned to goo from the force of her orgasm, and he chuckled against the crown of her head. 

His thumb continued to stroke her through her aftershocks until he came a few minutes later with a low grunt and a spasmodic jerking of his hips. 

They lay there for several minutes, and Betty could feel her eyes and her limbs wanting to succumb to the sweet succor of sleep. As tempted as she was to simply close her eyes and take advantage of the comforting heat from his chest, a small yet insistent voice in the back of her mind refused to let her forget that they were in her car on a semi public road. She was on the verge of telling her one inner voice to bug off when a much larger voice suddenly reminded her why she absolutely needed to get back to campus.

“Shit!” she said as she abruptly pushed herself away from his chest. “I completely forgot I organized a study group at 10 today!”

Jughead looked at her somewhat blearily through his own tired sex fog. Betty could see the wheels start to turn as he kept looking at her, and she braced herself for the question she knew Archie would’ve asked: ‘ _ Can’t you just cancel? _ ’

Instead, Jughead gave a small shake of his head before he said, “Well, I won’t have you ditch school over me.”

Betty’s jaw was already about to drop, but then he looked at her with a hopeful twinkle in his eye and said, “Maybe I come back with you and we pick this up when you’re done studying?”

Her thoughts started racing in a million directions. On the one hand, she liked that idea  _ very _ much, but on the other…

“I don’t have a single,” she said sheepishly.

“That’s ok. I’m used to not having much privacy,” he said with a grin.

“I live with Veronica,” Betty with a slight warning.

“So?” Jughead asked.

Betty’s thoughts floated back to their earlier discussion. If he wasn’t bothered by the idea of her friend and co-worker knowing about them, then why should she. 

  
Betty gave him as bright a smile as she could manage given the early hour and their sexploits before she started climbing back into the driver’s seat. As they took a couple minutes to put themselves to rights and Jughead discreetly disposed of the used condom, Betty couldn’t help but preen as she thought, ‘ _ So  _ indeed,’ before she put the car in drive and headed back to the dorms.

*~*~* The End *~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always--if you happen to like my story, comments/key smashing/fic recs/kudos/reblogs/etc are always super, super, SUPER appreciated!!! 
> 
> Feel free to come hit me up on the Tumblrz @sunshinebunnie, if you want. I promise I'm nice!

**Author's Note:**

> If you happen to like my story, comments/fic recs/keyboard smashing/kudos/reblogs are always super, super appreciated!!! 🤗🤗🤗🤗


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